After two months of trials, tribulations, designs, and re-designs, my new desk in L.A. is finally beginning to feel like my happy place.
I know it’s cliched: a writer talking about desks.
I’ve cringed my way through plenty of workshops hearing writers talk more about their writing instruments than their writing itself.
One classmate once told me that, in order to become a better writer, she’d spent $100 on the same make and model of pen that John Steinbeck used. Ten minutes later, she put said pen down and, without a hint of irony, asked our instructor why she wasn’t doing book tours yet.
Those conversations always remind me of a video I once watched of Flea complaining about a bass while filming a Red Hot Chili Peppers music video.
“What’s wrong with it?” a crew member asks.
Flea extrapolates, listing everything that makes the instrument awful, ugly, or useless, from its frets to its shape to the very wood it’s crafted with.
He summarizes his feelings: “It’s just a stupid piece of shit.”
“You know,” the crew member snickers, “they say the workman should never blame the tools.”
“Yeah, well maybe I should come over there and beat the fuck out of you,” Flea responds, to raucous laughter from the rest of the crew. “Ever think about that?”
To quote Flea, the last few desks I’ve used have been stupid pieces of shit.
I’m not looking for the desk equivalent of Steinbeck’s hundred-dollar pen — Hemingway had a standing desk in Havana, which I certainly wouldn’t argue against — but I do value a nice, comfortable working space.
Since arriving in California, we’ve upcycled and thrifted and online-ordered a variety of options, but none have so far reached the pantheon status of my previous writing desks.
Senior year at Eckerd, for example, I had a two-desk long MegaDesk that sat opposite a waterfront balcony. Its space was measured in acreage, rather than square inches. I wrote my senior thesis on humor in literature there, fueled by coffee and Miller High Life, listening to the sounds of splashing dolphins and boaters cruising towards B.U.I.s.
Even after graduating, my work-from-home lockdown space was a treat. An authentic wood beauty, my parents helped me thrift it from Salvation Army, after which we sanded it down and repainted it — a family affair.
The desks I’ve used since those treasures haven’t just fallen flat in comparison, they’ve been complete mockeries of my two-desk Mount Rushmore.
We’ve Amazoned an adjustable TV dinner desk, which wheels around the apartment but can’t fit a laptop and a cup of coffee at the same time. I also ordered a lap desk, which is a nice, cushioned flat surface for writing on the sofa while the Sixers are on, but hardly the fortress of literature you see authors using in hoity-toity magazines.
Finally, we struck gold on Marketplace when a limousine company in Culver City agreed to sell us three of their giant IKEA sit-stand desks for a grand total of zero dollars.
The catch?
Due to wear and/or tear, the desks no longer gracefully shift between the sit-stand options. Each desk is set permanently and irreparably to either sit or stand. Thus, our used desks are like the three beds that Goldilocks tries; one is waist-level (too high), the other is knee-level (too low), while the last one is just right.
Now, I don’t remember how the story of Goldilocks ends — the bear family devours the girl, right? — but in our story, the just right desk turns out to be not right at all.
My new writing desk, it turns out, is missing several screws, causing it to wobble like a flamingo in the breeze.
Author Denis Johnson once recommended that writers write as though their ink was blood. My Not-So-Goldilocks desk has gone one step forward by threatening to draw actual blood; this teetering son of a bitch could collapse on my legs at any second.
Nevertheless, the new guy feels more and more like my own with every passing word written on it.
In times of trouble, when Not-So-Goldilocks is shaking and my knick-knacks are falling off, I remind myself that the reason my other desks were special wasn’t because of their design, but because of what I accomplished on them.
It was at my Eckerd MegaDesk, for example, that author Shea Serrano responded to my email asking for advice.
“Waiting around for someone to offer you something is waiting around to die,” he wrote. “You gotta go get that shit.”
I scribbled his words onto a piece of notebook paper and taped it to MegaDesk, reading it every morning before I began writing. I took his advice in stride, and was rejected from my first real-life job application at that desk.
It was at MegaDesk, too, that I wrote the best short story of my college career, but it was at my next desk, in Madeira Beach, that the story was declined by twenty-seven straight publishers. With Serrano’s words in my mind, I made a promise to myself that if it wasn’t accepted on Attempt #28, I would scrap it and move on.
Four months later, it was accepted, and I became a published fiction author.
It was also at my Mad Beach desk that I received the mid-pandemic phone call informing me I had cancer, then, two years later, the post-pandemic phone call offering me a job in California.
In the time between, I taped more writerly advice from my favorite short story author, George Saunders, onto the wall above my Mad Beach desk. His words, borrowed from his book on craft, stared down at me as I accepted the job offer that moved me across the country. 3,000 miles later, after setting up my Not-So-Goldilocks desk, I recently met George Saunders in Beverly Hills, where he gave me more writing advice — this time personal, this time in-person.
What I’m trying to say, through all this garbled nonsense, is that I’d gladly struggle through a million piece of shit desks so long as I keep making memories like those.
So, as I straighten my knick-knacks on this wobbly piece of junk, and tape up new words of inspiration above it, I do so with confidence that, eventually, I’ll look back on this shit heap with warmth and fondness and pride in my heart.
Or maybe the legs will give out and I’ll be using my lap desk to write to you from the hospital.
Who knows what will happen next!
Tour of Not-So-Goldilocks
Shouts out to…
The National League champion Philadelphia Phillies, for subverting all of our expectations.
George Saunders, for the brief words of wisdom.
All those who have encouraged me, and keep encouraging me, to go get that shit.
As always..Love it Michael!😊❤
Keep up that writing ..even on that wobbly desk😊✌
Most enjoyable, Nephew.